52 
THE MUSEUM. 
the same manner. Phagocata resembles a compound ccelenterate, its probosces 
resembling so many polyps communicating with a common alimentary canal. When 
the probosces are detached they move about actively, like independent beings. 
They elongate and shorten, advance and recede, twist about like a divided earth 
worm, expand the mouth and swallow food and pass the latter and discharge it at 
the opposite extremity. I have suspected that, except the anterior one, the probos¬ 
ces are a progeny of young, but this needs investigation to determine. Besides the 
original locality in which I saw Phagocata, I have since found an occasional speci¬ 
men in springs in the vicinity of Philadelphia and Newport. It is said also to have 
been found in Massachusetts. 
Land Planarians, very few, compared with aquatic species, are found in moist 
places, in temperate and tropical countries. Of upward of sixty species only one has 
been discovered in North America, the Rhynchodeinus sylvaticus. In movement it is 
about half an inch in length, linear in shape, widest at the posterior fourth and grad¬ 
ually tapering to the head end, which is rounded or subacute, while the tail end is 
obtuse or variably acute. It is iron gray, with a variable darker longitudinal dorsal 
stripe on each side. The eyes are two, lateral, and appear slightly prominent. The 
mouth is behind the centre of the body, and the proboscis is of the usual form. The 
stomach also has the usual three-parted and dendritic arrangement. In movement 
the head curves upward, and in a state of rest is often recurved and rests on the back, 
with the end turned upward. I first detected this species under some flower boxes 
and pots in the little garden attached to my house, in Philadelphia. I afterwards 
sought and found it, on several occasions, in the woods of the vicinity of the city, on 
the Schuylkill. I subsequently found it in the Alleghanies, and in one instance col¬ 
lected a dozen individuals, early in the morning, on a paling fence, at Newport, 
Rhode Island. The animal appears to be carnivorous, as I found it to feed greedily 
on crushed house-flies. 
In the southwestern corner of Colorado are many thousands of ruined buildings 
which are supposed to have been erected hundreds of years ago, by an ancient people 
who have long since disappeared. In the vicinity of these old houses, tons of broken 
pottery are strewn over the ground. The ware is of superior quality, some of it 
colored a bright red, some white, with black designs painted on it. A few years ago 
a party belonging to the U. S. Geological Survey, in passing through a canon where 
these ruins abound, came across traces of a modern Indian encampment, in which the 
remains of a play-house of some Indian pappooses were found. A rough table had 
been made by laying a large, flat stone across two supporting rocks ; on this were 
a dozen or so large pieces of this ancient pottery and three beautiful stone arrow-heads, 
which had been utilized as a tea-set, and placed as though the little Indians had been 
“ playing tea-party,” just as their white brothers and sisters are in the habit of doing. 
The specimens of pottery were the finest found in that section. 
